


Mirror Images

by bendingwind



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-15
Updated: 2011-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-21 10:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingwind/pseuds/bendingwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the definitions of words, living a life backwards, and somehow falling in love.</p><p>Prompt by crycrywolf at the Guns & Curls ficathon: River/Eleven, River + Eleven, Guilt, atonement, redemption and promises. The Doctor spends the rest of his life making it up to River; River spends her entire life making it up to the Doctor. Your choice on what it is they both feel guilty for/are trying to atone for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror Images

**guilt:** n. _a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined._

Melody Pond sits on a cold stone wall beside the river and kicks her feet through the air. Mum’s crying again. She feels a little guilty for not staying behind to rub her mother’s back and make her tea and sing to her, but today’s her tenth birthday and she doesn’t want to spend it under her mother’s hopeless, blank stare.

“Hello,” a man says, sitting next to her. She stiffens because the voice is unfamiliar, and Melody knows every single person who lives in Leadworth, and she more than anyone knows better than to talk to strangers. She looks up at a floppy-haired man wearing a bowtie, and is struck by the fact that he is, after all, _familiar._

“Hello?” she asks, looking at him curiously. He beams at her.

“Hello, Melody Pond. A, er, little earwig—is it bird in this century, I think it’s bird—a little _bird_ told me it was your birthday today!”

She stares at him blankly.

“Erm, it is your birthday… isn’t it?” he asks, fidgeting a bit nervously.

“How did you know?” she asks, suspicious now.

“Marvelous!” He completely ignores her question, and somehow she isn’t surprised. “Your tenth, I believe! I’m afraid I can’t stay very long, there seems to be a nest of Harpatchi hatching over the next hill and frankly I need to get them into space before they start poking holes in the atmosphere, but I brought you something!” He pulls something out of a pocket in his jacket and, cautiously, River accepts it. It’s a book, blue-covered, and when she opens it, the pages are blank

“What is it?” she asks, curious.

“It’s a journal. Your father made it for your mother, but since she didn’t use it, he asked me to give it to you,” he explains, and she drops it on the ground.

“Why would you give it to me?” she asks, her voice suddenly shrill and her eyes welling with tears. “That’s such a mean thing to do!” He looks so totally startled that it calms her down a bit, and she is more waveringly able to say, “I killed him, you know. My Dad. I didn’t mean to, they made me, I couldn’t—you can’t give me this. He wouldn’t want me to have it.”

“Who told you that?” he asks, moving to kneel in front of her. “Tell me, Pond, who told you that he wouldn’t want you to have it.”

“Mum won’t let me touch his things,” she whispers, “She knows I didn’t mean to, but when she looks at me…”

“Ah,” he says, and his tone is so gentle that he starts to cry again. “I didn’t think of that. Your mum loves you, Melody, so much; she just has to remember that. You’ll have to give her some time.”

It strikes her that she is crying in front of a man who is nearly a stranger, no matter how familiar he feels, and she looks away with embarrassment. “I know.”

“Hey,” he leans forward and cups her cheek in his hand. “I knew your dad really, really well, and he loved you and your mum more than anything in the world. He did want you to have this—he knew what was going to happen, and he gave it to me, _for you_. Your dad knew it wasn’t your fault, and he loved you so much that he let it happen to protect you. He forgave you before you’d even done it—and so did I.”

Melody stares at him. He smiles sheepishly, straightens, and bops her on the nose.

“Sorry, I really have to get to those aliens taken care of. You could always—no, no, Amy would kill me, you’re far too young to come with me. Run along, Pond… and don’t forget your present.” He dashes off with the same mad absurdity with which he arrived, and Melody leans down to pick up the journal he gave her. She opens it again, and this time she sees the title on the first page.

 _The Diary of River Song_

Melody Pond. River Song.

It’s almost twilight by the time she gets home, and her mother has stopped crying.

“Where have you been, Melody?” her mother asks, and she shrugs.

“Mum?” she asks.

“Yes, sweetheart? Oh, and happy birthday. I made you a cake.” Her mother gives her a tired smile and motions to the counter, where a beautifully iced chocolate cake is waiting with ten yellow candles.

“Could… could you call me River?” she asks. Her mother freezes for a moment, and finally her eyes flutter closed and she sighs.

“Of course, swee—River. Would you like to have your cake now?”

“Yes please,” River says, and she timidly hugs her mother. Her mother hugs her back, and for the first time she squeezes her lightly.

River never forgets that the Doctor was the first to teach her forgiveness, and she never stops trying to repay him for it.

* * *

 **atonement:** n. _satisfaction or reparation for a wrong or injury; amends._

“I’m ready to go back,” she says, “It’s time I faced my punishment.”

She’s sitting on a wharf near a little town on a planet in Orion’s Belt, dipping her toes into the sea. “We’ve been avoiding the consequences for all these years, but I should pay for what I did.”

“River—” He starts to speak but then stops himself.

“I know you think I don’t deserve it,” she continues. “But I do. Trying to kill you, that wasn’t my fault—they lied to me all of my life about who and what you were. Killing him, though… I knew he was my father, and I loved him, and I knew it was wrong, but I did it because they told me it would make me stronger. Strong enough to kill you, strong enough to go back to my mother, strong enough to protect what remained of my family from you, and I thought that that’s what he would want. Now I realize that the strength I gained was only brutality.”

“What do you want to do?” he asks, quietly.

“We’ve never been back to the fifty-first century,” she says, by way of answer.

“You want to turn yourself in.”

“Yeah.” She looks up at him, and her eyes are pale in the rising sun and so very, very young, and so very, very old, and brimming with tears. He can see that she’s putting effort into not blinking for fear that they will run. He almost reaches out to brush her cheek, an offering of comfort, but this River is too young, and she knows him better in stories than in fact. So they sit like that for a while, and he watches her as she looks out to sea and tries not to cry, and when the tension has drained out of her and her tears have dried, he stands and offers her his hand. They step into the TARDIS and he takes her to the Saint Olirian Benedict Convent, where he knows they will be kind. He gives her a lingering hug farewell and beats a hasty retreat to the TARDIS. He already knows of her time in the Old Hermitry, her long trial and her years in Stormcage. He has already lived it.

On the console of the TARDIS is a note, written in her elegant scrawl:

 _Doctor,_

 _I was lost on Earth before you came to find me. There was nobody there like me, and I understand now, I never would have found anyone who understood. We’re the last two left who see the universe in quite this way, aren’t we? I can’t explain what it felt like to meet you once I was old enough to understand that you could drown out the static in my head, only, you must have felt it too. I was grateful to spend the time with you, and I’m sorry to leave you now, to leave both of us with the static and the emptiness and the loneliness. I wish I’d thought of a way to punish myself without punishing you as well, and I wish I could have stayed with you forever, but I have to live with myself and this is how I need to do it._

 _Someday, if the static becomes too much, come for me. I’ll be waiting._

 _Thank you for showing me the universe._

 _X_

He folds it neatly, tucks it gently in his pocket, and wonders if the Burning Hills of Pex would be too hot to visit this time of year. Then again, he can go any time of year he chooses.

* * *

 **redemption:** n. _deliverance; rescue._  
She runs through the empty hallways, almost tripping in her haste, and skids to his side on her knees.

“What’s wrong with him?” she demands of the skinny, freckled brunette hovering above him.

“I don’t know, he just clutched his head and keeled over!” The girl’s voice is high and panicked, and River realizes suddenly that the girl is on the verge of tears.

“Go sit down,” she commands the girl, harsh in her irritation. “Stupid idiot, you told me you’d come get me if it was too much.”

She hovers over him, scanning him for physical injury. Once she is satisfied that his body is safe, she gingerly brushes his mind with her own, and almost recoils. His thoughts are a jumbled mess, black and violently swirling like the sea during a storm. She shushes his panic and his loneliness with quiet memories, the times she was happy with her mother, the times she was happy with him. She’s never been so happy as she was with him… and she jerks her mind away at a sudden realization. But now is not the time for that, to worry and fret and fear, so she puts the thought away and focuses on him, on singing lullabies in Gallifreyan and brushing her cool hand across his forehead, the way his mother used to do. Slowly the storm starts to calm, and she sings him one last lullaby, the only one she remembers from her childhood.

 _Blow the wind, blow;  
Swift and low;  
Blow the wind o'er the ocean.  
Breakers rolling to the coastline;  
Bringing ships to harbor;  
Gulls against the morning sunlight;  
Flying off to freedom!_

“Rory used to sing that to you,” he mumbles, looking at her through barely-open eyes.

“Yeah,” she says, and she struggles to hold back tears of fear. “You stupid idiot, you could have died!”

“Not likely. Probably would have gone mad, though,” he says, offering her a weak smile. He reaches up and gently brushes his thumb across her cheek. He tucks a strand of her hair behind her ears as she stares at him, transfixed by the feel of his skin and the sudden pleading in his eyes. “I’m glad you came,” he says.

Someone stirs nearby, and suddenly River remembers his companion. She breaks free from his touch, shaking, and apologizes. “I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier. I’m River Song.”

“Oh, erm, I’m Carol. Carol Lake.” River quirks an eyebrow.

“Our Doctor _does_ have a thing for a certain type of name, doesn’t he?” she asks, and they dissolve into laughter. There’s a hysterical edge to their merriment, a feeling of a crisis only just averted, but it is healing nonetheless.

She talks with Carol a little more as the Doctor recovers, and allows him to drop her back off at Stormcage. Once he’s gone, she sits in her cell and turns that particular thought over and over in her mind, studying it from every angle, wondering; has she found the thing she thought she’d left behind?

That night, instead of writing in her diary, she draws a picture of his face when he sleeps, and smiles.

* * *

 **promise:** n. _a declaration that something will or will not be done_

 _“Would you rather things were different?”_

 _“What do you mean?” she asks, rolling over. She reaches over and brushes grass from his hair._

 _“That we weren’t meeting like this, almost backwards.” In turn, he breaks off a flower and places it in her hair. He tilts his head, considering, and then places another beside it._

 _“I do, sometimes,” she hums, “Why?”_

 _“Do you trust me, River Song?” he asks, tracing the line of her jaw with a gentle caress. He searches her eyes, almost desperate._

 _“I do,” she replies, with a smile._

 _“Let’s promise to always save each other."_

 _“Okay.”_

* * *

 **redemption:** n. _an act of redeeming or the state of being redeemed_  
She’s run away again, to Paris and Alerette and Ulongoria. She sneaks aboard the TARDIS when she runs across him in Venice, and finds him sitting on the ragged couch beside the console, his head in his hands.

“What is it, Doctor?” she asks, rushing to him. He jumps and stares at her, clearly startled.

 _“River?”_

“Er, yes,” she says, jerking back the hand she had been about to place on his shoulder.

“You snuck aboard again,” he sighs, suddenly relaxing. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.”

“What’s wrong?” she asks again.

“Spoilers,” he whispers, and she realizes that for the first time she has asked a question that she cannot know the answers to. “I’m so sorry, River. You never asked the things I knew, never asked me to tell you your future, but this is the part where I can’t tell you any of the story.”

“Oh,” she says, letting her hands fall to her sides and moving to sit beside him. “Nothing?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

She pauses for a moment, and then timidly asks, “Will you tell me one thing?”

He pauses for a moment, and she can almost hear him answer, _Anything._ “What is it?” he asks instead.

“You’re lonely, my Doctor,” she says, moving to sit beside him. “And I’m sick of calling you pretty little nicknames. Could you… will you tell me your name?”

“I will,” he answers, and she holds her breath. “But not just yet, River.” He leans towards her so that his forehead rests against her own. “You’ll find out who I am soon, and I’m sorry—”

She shoves him away from her and stands, suddenly shaking with fury.

“How dare you! As if I don’t _know_ exactly who you are! I spent my childhood being told every dark thing you’d ever done, every mistake you’d ever made! I _know_ who you are, _sweetie,_ ” she all but hisses. “And I know who you will be! If you think for one second you need to apologize to me for who are you are, you do not know me as well as I thought you did, and you do not trust me as much as I trust you!”

“Ah,” he says, and he bows his head and cries.

“Thank you, my River,” he whispers through his tears, and her anger drips off her heart and melts onto the floor, and she wraps her arms around him as he cries.

* * *

 **atonement:** n. _reconciliation or agreement_

She can feel every muscle in her body pulsing as she runs, as fast as she can force her ragged body to move, down another endless hallway. He should be here, any minute now, she can feel his mind buzzing at the edge of her own—

She rounds the corner and there he is, slumped against a wall, eyes closed and chest still. If she believed that she could not run any faster, she quickly proves herself wrong.

“What’s wrong?” she gasps out as she kneels beside him. “Doctor! Doctor!”

He opens his eyes, blinking blearily at her.

“Oh, hello River,” he mumbles, lids heavy and eyes half-closed.

“We have to move,” she hisses at him, irrationally furious at him or herself or the universe for scaring her so badly. “Get up, you massive idiot.” He allows her to tug him to his feet and drag him at top speed back to the TARDIS. She shuts the door behind her and turns to him, eyes glowing with anger and adrenaline and something deeper.

“Thanks,” he says, very nearly himself again. She lunges forward and presses him down against the stairs, irrationally hoping that his back bruises as she kisses him. He seems surprised and, then, almost too eager as he wraps his arms around her and nips her bottom lip. She opens her mouth, inviting him to deepen the kiss as she fumbles with the buttons of his shirt. It doesn’t take her long to divest him of his clothes, nor he her. He runs cool hands down her hot skin and brushes kisses across her collarbone. She is not nearly so delicate; she kisses and nips at his earlobe, scrapes her nails down his spine and is briefly distracted by the shadow of his hipbone. She is demanding, and hungry, and high on danger, and soon he is moving within her. They ride the wave to its crest, and she screams as she comes. He is quieter, just a sharp gasp, and she buries her face in the soft skin joining his neck and his shoulder.

“Mmmm,” she mumbles, “That was probably a bad idea.”

“We’ll have to test it again to be sure,” he pants, wrapping his arm around her again. She smiles and pulls him closer, gently ticking his side with the edges of her nails.

She wakes up in his bed the following morning and marvels at it, a simple narrow bed with white sheets surrounded by a delicate metal garden. She follows the curve of his back, the small bumps of his spine to the dimples at the base of his back, to the neatly striped bruises on his ass and thighs. She throws back her head and laughs, and he throws a pillow at her before burrowing deeper into his bed.

* * *

guilt: n. remorse or self-reproach caused by feeling that one is responsible for a wrong or offence

She called for him this time, not for any particular reason but just to escape her cage for a few days of freedom, and to her surprise he came. They sit in the TARDIS, her head resting in his lap as he brushes her hair for her.

“If you could stay with me forever, River Song, would you?” he asks.

“What kind of question is _that?”_ she asks, laughing. “Of course I would. We have forever, don’t we—all of time and space, all of our very, very long lives.”

“Everything dies eventually,” he points out. She shrugs, an awkward motion to pursue while lying down.

“I’m not afraid of death. They say there’s nothing after, you’re just… gone. And that’s okay, because it means that you won’t care that you’re dead.” She turns to face him, her brows suddenly furrowed. “It’s you I worry about, if I were to die before you. Could you be alone again, my Doctor?”

Mutely, he shakes his head. “And if you could stay, after? Be with me, sort of… around, when I needed to talk?”

“After death?”

“Well, yeah.” He looks a little nervous now, and the sudden realization that he is skirting terribly close to spoilers terrifies her.

“Forever,” she repeats in a shaky voice, “I will stay with you forever, whatever that takes.”

“Okay,” he answers, and he wraps his arms around her. He holds her until her shaking subsides, and plays with the ends of her hair and brushes kisses across her eyelids. They have kissed, slept together before, all the things that can be done—but nothing has seemed quite so intimate as this, alone together, with the promise of forever.

* * *

 **Love: ****n. _ ~~a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.~~ Saving the person who is your salvation._**


End file.
